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SUPPORTING ENHANCEMENTS TODAY — AND PROVIDING A PLATFORM FOR THE FUTURE
Cat® Hydraulic Mining Shovel (HMS) product leaders agree that the updated electronic architecture is one of the most critical tenets of the design philosophy for next generation shovel development.
Next generation HMS take advantage of an Optimized Electronic Architecture (OEA) that supports productivity, safety and reliability improvements today and provides a platform that will seamlessly integrate future technologies to meet the needs of the site.
This architecture impacts nearly every aspect of the next generation shovel. The integration of proven and validated Cat electronics delivers additional performance and reliability advantages, helps operators be more productive, enables a proactive approach to maintenance, and improves connectivity to optional advanced technologies.
“This is our electronic backbone — our DNA — that we’re installing in the next generation machines,” says Paul Taylor, HMS Value Stream Manager. “This allows us to leverage technology going forward to make ourselves more efficient, so the shovel is creating value for the maximum amount of time. It’s an expandable platform and architecture that is designed for future updates.”
Caterpillar Engineering Manager Sean Johnson is responsible for many of the new technology enhancements that are currently available or in development for HMS. He describes the new platform as a retrofit architecture that makes it possible for those new enhancements to easily be added to existing machines.
“We wanted to set an architecture that we could retrofit in an expandable way,” he says.
“So we created what we call a retrofit architecture that will take all the new Cat OEA hardware and allow us to lay that on top of our legacy control system on the shovels. It’s an architecture that we can build on for our customers.”
This system is also common with other Cat machines, allowing Cat dealers and machine owners to leverage system knowledge from other products in their support of hydraulic mining shovels.
Enabling a proactive approach to maintenance
Caterpillar and Cat MineStar™ Solutions offer several products and services that customers can leverage to improve the health and reliability of their mining machines. The connectivity enabled by the new electronic architecture makes it possible for mines to more easily take advantage of these offerings.
Key to connectivity is an improved Product Link™ Elite (PLE) system, which increases the availability of data provided by the shovel. Every new Cat shovel coming out of the factory has PLE as a standard feature. This on-board technology enables the shovel to collect and transmit information into locally hosted or cloud-hosted applications such as MineStar Health Office, Health Equipment Insights, Equipment Care Advisor or Vision Link.
The system opens the door for industry-leading equipment health and condition monitoring services from Caterpillar and Cat dealers. In addition, service personnel have access to Cat Electronic Technician (ET), which enables easy diagnosis of potential problems and can help prevent future issues.
“We have the ability to monitor the health of our machine remotely, make data-driven decisions and recommendations, and increase uptime by reducing unscheduled downtime,” says Product Support Manager Chris Mullins.
Mullins also describes the value of advanced Health technologies like Equipment Care Advisor, which enables a proactive approach to maintenance: “That’s a huge step forward. We can easily connect the shovels to this service. And what it helps us do is gather more and more data to focus our work and set our priorities. It’s an incredibly proactive way of supporting our customers. We have 24-hour support where algorithms are in place that monitor machines and make recommendations when issues arise. Our priority is to prevent those things that contribute to downtime.”
Supporting the technology roadmap
Next generation shovel development follows a technology roadmap created in partnership with Cat customers. This roadmap is aligned with providing technologies that help sites achieve their climate-related goals while also lowering overall cost per ton of the mining operation.
The updated architecture supports this technology roadmap by serving as the platform for new on-board and optional technology features and setting the stage for the journey to autonomous mining.